Interview: Dave Moyes, information and digital systems partner, SimpsonHaugh Architects

Managing data-powered services

Architecture’s reliance on digital and data has increased significantly over the past decade. Moyes says the number of drawings his firm produces has risen alongside client expectations and the requirement to use capabilities in specialist tools, such as Revit and Rhino.

“Ten years ago, we may have done 300 or 400 drawings for a client package – now, we’re probably doing 1,000 or 1,500-plus drawings,” he says. “The level of detail has increased, the level of sophistication around the design elements has increased, and the level of metadata, particularly with BIM models, is now a big part of the deliverable for clients.”

Moyes says each client has different expectations about the quality and level of data. However, every project has some form of data deliverable. In addition, the relationship between architectural practice and data deliverables will tighten sooner rather than later.

“AI will shake the industry up over the next two years,” he says. “The transformation with BIM technologies has been a 10-year journey for most of the industry. AI is going to be much more rapid. That’s a positive thing and will help move us forward.”

However, more data brings more challenges. As architecture firms use digital services from multiple providers, Moyes says data interoperability will be one of the biggest concerns over the next few years from a user perspective.

“We traditionally had ways of getting around those issues,” he says. “Now, because things are becoming more proprietary, we’re getting more concerns. The industry is crying out for an open file format.”

Delivering world-leading designs

The sector’s technological challenges mean Moyes is firmly focused on creating the right foundations to help SimpsonHaugh react effectively to ongoing digital transformation.

“Much of our work is about putting the foundations in place and ensuring we’re on a strong footing for whatever the future may throw at us. We’re architects, not technologists. IT is an overhead to the business, so we’ve got to be careful with what we spend,” he says.

“Like most architectural businesses, we sweat the assets for as long as possible. It’s worth making an additional investment up front to ensure the assets have a good lifespan and, because of the pace of change, making sure you don’t have to spend more money on the kit in three years, which doesn’t sit well with any business.”

Moyes says he’s already invested heavily in IT foundations. SimpsonHaugh is upgrading its corporate network to a 25GB Ethernet backbone. The practice has purchased higher resolution 2K and 4K screens for staff and introduced Nutanix data storage to manage its virtual server environment.

“AI will shake the industry up over the next two years. The transformation with BIM technologies has been a 10-year journey for most. AI is going to be much more rapid. That’s a positive thing and will help move us forward”

Dave Moyes, SimpsonHaugh Architects

SimpsonHaugh also spends significant time and money strengthening its security posture. Moyes says a focus on security is a common practice in the sector. Client project confidentiality is a big issue. The firm has to manage client data and contracts with strict non-disclosure agreements. This tightly governed approach results in the delivery of world-leading building designs.

The practice is known for projects that help revitalise urban areas. SimpsonHaugh’s portfolio includes offices, hotels, student accommodation and mixed-use developments. Some of its award-winning schemes include Deansgate Square in Manchester, One Blackfriars in London, the Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Central Lancashire, and Circus West Village – previously known as Battersea Power Station Phase 1.

Moyes reflects on these designs and says he’s particularly proud of the development at Blackfriars. “It’s a great building, but from a technology point of view, it was one of the first projects where we weren’t just exchanging drawings,” he says. “We were exchanging computational Grasshopper scripts back and forth between ourselves and the design team.”

Moyes is proud of the scale of the development at Battersea. He also draws attention to a project in Manchester called Library Walk, a glass structure that joins the town hall to the central library.

“It’s incredible from an engineering point of view,” he says. “This two-and-a-half ton structure looks like a cloud form made of glass.”

Building foundations for further change

One of Moyes’ key projects during the past few years has been implementing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology.

The practice is spending £1.21m on technologies, including Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop, Citrix NetScaler, VMware vSphere Hypervisor, Dell Servers with vSAN storage, Nvidia vGPUs and ControlUp’s DEX platform, which provides VDI performance analytics and remediation.

We’re architects, not technologists. IT is an overhead to the business, so we’ve got to be careful with what we spend

Specialist service provider Ebb3 supported the roll-out of the technologies in early 2022. The company also helps to manage the VDI environment.

Moyes says the big benefit of the managed VDI approach is staff can hook into the network securely and effectively from any location, knowing their demands for IT will be met comfortably.

“From the end-user perspective, we can ensure they always have enough resources,” he says. “They never feel like the machine is frozen or hung. We have some resource-intensive applications. It’ll throttle these applications so they still work and users don’t have frozen sessions. That approach works across both the physical desktops and the VDI environment.”

The technology has helped to cut maintenance requirements and supported productivity increases. Introducing VDI has also led to a big reduction in IT downtime, equating to approximately 17% of SimpsonHaugh’s 2023 turnover, or £1.79m lost earnings saved.

Most importantly, the technology supports better working practices. VDI has improved collaboration with trusted third parties, such as specialist consultants. The practice’s infrastructure is optimised to cater for the peaks and troughs of project workflows, helping Moyes and his team manage unused capacity and reduce IT costs.

“We’re in a much happier place,” he says. “The practice is people-focused, and IT should enable our staff to design buildings and have a good work-life balance. Giving employees the ability to do what they need, in the office, at home or an internet café, adds value to our business and ultimately adds value to our clients because we end up with better designs.”

Finding the right tools

Moyes continues to push his digital transformation agenda and paints a picture of the data-enabled practice he’d like to have helped create 24 months from now.

“Innovation is just a positive synonym for disruption, so I hope the technology that comes through AI disrupts our current processes,” he says. “You might not get it right the first time, but it’s no excuse for stopping because a particular path with an AI tool didn’t work out. Find a tool that fits the business and move forward.”

Moyes says SimpsonHaugh is already exploring AI in three key areas: word AI, image AI and generative AI. Word AI will help staff reduce hours spent on time-intensive tasks, such as summarising reports and preparing emails. “There’s a project underway to look at the data structure,” he says. “We’re reviewing the implications of the technology.”

The practice will use generative AI for parametric design, where features, including building elements and engineering components, are shaped using algorithmic processes rather than direct manipulation. Moyes says this branch of AI is well-established in architecture, and his firm will continue to hone its approach, using tools like Autodesk Forma and Grasshopper on the back of Rhino.

“We’ve been doing AI for a long time,” he says. “The computational stuff we did on Blackfriars for the design through Grasshopper used generative AI. We generated the drawings and floor plans and unfolded elevations from computational models. So, while the term generative AI is new, the processes are not.”

Finally, image AI will help staff create early-stage design proposals based on sketches and prompts. Moyes says this technology enhances sales processes and allows employees to generate a project pitch quickly.

“This is an interesting area because it can make a massive difference to the industry,” he says.

“It’s difficult for us to use the public cloud because of the sensitivity of our data, so we need an internally hosted solution. We’re looking at our options, and we’ve implemented ComfyUI as an AI tool, which we’ve trained with our data. That technology is in active use. We hope there will be several tools we’ll actively use to generate images.”